Ah, another travel day. Andrea’s tummy wasn’t feeling very good this morning (we both had a hard time falling asleep), so we slowly assembled ourselves and our things for the trek to the train station. We grabbed a little breakfast in the hotel (complimentary, again better than our last place), checked out, and headed the few blocks to Roma Termini. We met up with Wayne and Kim and our train hadn’t been assigned a track yet. As seems to be the norm for our travels, it didn’t get a track until a few minutes before arrival, at which point we became a little part of the mass of humanity making its way towards the train to Firenze (Florence).
Since we’d all had prior experience, we now understood how we were supposed to find our designated car and seats. We made our way to car 11. Although we had 4 sequential seats in the 50s, Trenitalia’s assignments are all wonky. Each side of the aisle has 2 pairs of seats facing each other, but we ended up with one aisle and one window seat on both sides of the aisle. Weird. Worse, though, was there was very little space to put our luggage (our giant tourist suitcases 🙂 ). The racks near the doors were full, and while one of our bags fit between the backs of the seats, the other would not. I ended up doing a little luggage clean and jerk near the gangway so I could put the larger bag into the overhead bin, which it miraculously fit into.
The ride to Florence was largely uneventful, except for some really load and irritating cell phone ringers that rang repeatedly. Every time Wayne would look at me and ask me to answer my phone, a joke that really did play well each time. 🙂
We arrived in Florence and wheeled our baggage across the bumpy streets and narrow sidewalks to the bed and breakfast, which wasn’t really marked, so I’m glad we knew the exact address. We buzzed up to the hotel, were let in and discovered there’s no elevator and the Dream Domus is 2 floors up. No big deal, but something we all admitted we wish we knew beforehand. We lugged our bags up and checked into our rooms. The rooms are very nice, and very charming. Ours had a little entrance hallway leading to a decently sized bedroom with a nice bed and chandelier.
Since we hadn’t eaten all day we headed south in search of food. We found a nice restaurant (Ristorante il Grande Nuti) just down the block from our hotel. Everything was good (except Andrea’s calzone was a bit empty), and their house wine was tasty too. Kim’s bleu cheese gnocchi was probably the best. After we finished up we headed towards the Duomo.
The Duomo is a large Renaissance cathedral, complete with appropriately large dome. The space inside was simple until we reached the dome itself, which is covered in ornate frescoes. There was an option to climb the stairs to the cupola (dome), but it was getting late and we didn’t think it’d be worth the time or the cost. There was an especially cool set of offering trees, laden with little votive candles. Under the floor of the Duomo was a gift shop and excavation project; evidently there was an earlier basilica at the same site, that the Duomo was built on top of. Interesting, and another example of just how laden with Western history Italy really is.
We crossed the street to the Duomo museum, which contains a tremendous amount of sculpture, relief work, and paintings that have been removed as the church was redesigned and updated through the years. Some of the most interesting works were the architectural proposals for the redesign of the facade of the church in the early 19th century. There was an open contest for the redesign, a contest that was rerun several times as they didn’t like the proposals enough, until they finally decided on the facade as it stands today. Also in the museum are another Pieta by Michelangelo and sculptures by Donatello. We have now covered all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle namesakes.
The Duomo is an impressive church, but it has a really gaudy exterior of white, green, and pink marble. Even more interesting is they’ve been restoring the building, so there was a marked difference in just how dirty the back of the church is, as compared to the front, which is much brighter and cleaner. But that really just makes it even more gaudy. 🙂
We went back to the hotel, and picked up our dirty laundry. We’d passed a launderette earlier, and we could all use more clean clothes. Wayne and I (Matt) found a gelateria, picking up beer and gelato to occupy us while the washers spun. Our new, especially creepy friend Stefano slunk into the launderette, and I mean slunk. He kept his hands in his denim coat pockets and eased his way through the barely open door without touching it, a weird big grin on his face. He spoke only Italian, and happily (though creepily) asked us where we were from, what we do, and what sports we play. Wayne said he didn’t play any sports, so Stefano suggested he was a big fan of the “discotheque, no?,” waving his arms around to suggest dancing. Then he asked if any of us were studying medicine, and seemed to indicate that he, himself was, and wanted to look at Kim’s feet. This is where it got really weird. He started asking Kim to walk around, to take off her shoe, Kim saying no, Stefano becoming more frustrated, especially because we don’t speak Italian, and finally culminating in his storming off down the street (thankfully). Before that we were pretty sure he was going to ask for money or try to steal something.
The laundry was dropped off at the hotel, and we made our way back into the nearby central market to find a place to eat. We settled on Za-Za, and took a table indoors. We had more decent house wine and pretty good food, although not outstanding. It seemed to be a very popular place, and later we found it in Rick Steves’ book as a recommendation. The price wasn’t too bad, although we had another cover charge, this one being 3 Euro per person. We decided that with cover charges we’re only going to tip for above and beyond service from now on; no more guilt-driven tipping bad service. 🙂
matt & andrea 